


but i’ve been everywhere and it’s not what i want

by ptrprkrs



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Touching, Yearning, so true bi julie and pan luke, touching as a love language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26444140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ptrprkrs/pseuds/ptrprkrs
Summary: i want to still be with youor, five times luke tries to touch julie and one time he can
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 32
Kudos: 1125





	but i’ve been everywhere and it’s not what i want

**Author's Note:**

> luke and julie...they got me...this entire show is a masterpiece and i literally had no choice but to write this so here. just a healthy dose of yearning for the touch of the one you love
> 
> title from ‘texas reznikoff’ by mitski

**1.**

This, Luke thinks, is weird. Like, really weird. Like, _I just died and woke up in the future_ weird. Which, actually, is what happened. 

He also thinks that the girl’s reaction was completely normal. Because, well, three crazy good looking guys appearing out of thin air in front of you is kinda creepy. The _appearing out of thin air_ part, not the _crazy good looking_ one because, duh. 

So, Luke doesn’t hold it against her when she goes screaming bloody murder around the house. He’s actually slightly relieved (is that mean? Whatever) when she leaves because that means he gets to look around a little bit. But, because the universe seems to be against him (you know, because he’s _dead_ ), Alex, Reggie and him disappear just as quickly as they appeared.

But the girl comes back, and so do they, and Luke is eternally grateful for his sudden comedic timing but the girl is still screaming, so he’s not sure how to feel about that. (He thinks he heard Reggie laugh a little, but Reggie is like a puppy—excitable and easily impressed—so he doesnʼt really count him, but Lukeʼll take what he can get.) 

He finally gets to look around, even though the girl is following him like he’s a devil that needs to be warded off (which, fair, because _ghosts_ ), but there’s something really off about everything. For example, there are _chairs_ on the _ceiling_ and all their stuff is gone. 

(He hasn’t completely vetoed Reggie’s witch idea.)

But, it turns out they’ve been dead 25 years, and the garage isn’t their’s anymore— _they don’t have a home anymore_. It’s a scary realisation, that. The home they made when they left their old ones being taken away from them. And the girl—who’s name Luke learns is _Julie_ —is kinda mean for a teenage girl and she really didn’t have to rub it in as harshly as she did.

He doesn’t know why he does it, considering the whole ghost thing, but regardless, Luke holds his hand out for Julie to shake after introducing himself. She doesn’t take it, obviously, and Luke feels really stupid after. 

He doesn’t expect her to come around and let them stay, but he’s really glad she did.

**2.**

Luke is very aware of the concept of _boundaries_. But that’s all it is to him. A concept. 

So, he’ll admit, he didn’t really see the problem with sneaking into Julie’s room to look inside her Dream Box at the poems she’d written. Reggie did, but he caved just as quickly so it didn’t count. And Alex definitely would have if he was there at all to have a say. 

But, it _did_ result in them writing an awesome song, Flynn loved it, and it restored the relationship of two best friends, so Luke sees this as a win.

Another win is the fact that him and Julie get to write even more awesome songs now that she has officially joined the band.

They were in the garage brainstorming ideas for a new song and Julie was sitting at the piano bench with a packet of chips opened up in front of her, tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth as she writes in her notebook. 

Luke, who was lying on the couch thinking up melodies, sits up and walks over to her “You’re just going to eat in front me? While I starve?”

Julie snorts, covering her mouth, and Luke can’t help but smile at that. “Can you even get hungry?” she goes to poke his stomach and her finger passes right through as though proving her point.

“Okay, stop that,” he scolds, with no real bite behind it. Julie just giggles and continues munching on her chips. “You would think you would have more respect for the dead.”

“All my respect for you went out the window the moment you went through my stuff without my permission,” she says with a raised eyebrow.

Luke sighs exasperatedly. “How many times do I have to apologise for that.”

“As many times as I want you to.” Julie sticks her tongue out at him childishly, and he does it back in retaliation. “Also stop milking the dead thing. It’s getting tiring.”

“You’re just jealous you don’t have ghost privileges.”

“And what are these ‘ghost privileges’?”

“Never having to wait in line, seeing free screening of movies—”

“Never getting to eat any of the snacks.”

“Ignoring and continuing! Immediate transportation _anywhere_ —”

“Invading people’s privacy.”

“Oh my god, let it go!”

She barks out a laugh and raises her hands in mock surrender. “I cede, I cede.”

Rolling his eyes, Luke sits down on the bench next to her. “So, what have you been busy with?”

And she plays a little of what she has so far, murmuring a vague melody under her breath, and wow. She’s really good. Like, insanely talented. Which, yes, Luke already knows this, it’s not news, but this is his first time seeing just how amazing she is up close. 

Now, Luke isn’t a piano player, but he knows a few notes and chords to get by, so he doesn’t think twice about placing his hands on the keys to add in what he thinks would work. Julie looks up at him, an eyebrow raised in silent question and he just shrugs, a smirk playing on his lips.

They’re sitting relatively close to each other so it wouldn’t be weird if either one of them had to pass through the other. Except for the fact that there’s still a bit of distance between them. Except for the fact that the only way for that to happen was if one of them were to close that distance.

Now, he doesn’t know why he does it, but Luke finds himself dancing his hands across the piano until he meets Julie’s. She abruptly stops playing like she wasn’t expecting it and Luke retracts his hands.

Clearing his throat, Luke pulls his hands into his lap. “Um, can you play anything else?”

Reaching for her notebook nervously, Julie flips through pages intently. “What, like a song? Because I have—”

“No, like an instrument. Or, is this like,” he gestures to the piano they’re sitting at, “you’re whole thing, Piano Man?”

Julie looks up at him blankly. “I feel like there’s a joke there that I’m just not getting.”

Luke gapes. “Come on! _Piano Man_? Billy Joel? Released in 1973 and—I checked—named one of the greatest songs of all time?” 

He waits for recognition to pass on her face but it never does. Instead she pops a chip into her mouth and eyes him with raised eyebrows. “Wow. You may look like a teenager, but you have the mind of an old man.”

“I resent that!”

“My apologies, Count Dracula.”

“Stop it!”

**3.**

Luke isn’t a selfish person. Really, he isn’t. He just messes up sometimes, runs out on people that care about him, and doesn’t know how to fix it. What he does know is that they need to leave and get to that dance. Now.

He knows the chances of the dance still happening are zero to none; it’s midnight and he doubts that teachers would let teenagers stay out that late for anything. But he’s running on an obscene amount of hope and enough carbs to feed a small town, so there isn’t really much that can stop him at this point.

It’s a bittersweet miracle that Julie is still in the gym when they arrive. He says bittersweet because she looks so _small_ sitting there by herself. But when she stands up to tell them off, he realises that she’s _mad_ , too.

The fact that she thinks they’re going to flake on her again hurts, even though her distrust is valid. She’s going on about how friends don’t bail on each other, especially when they know how important something is and she’s _right_ and Luke feels so, so guilty, and he knows the guys do, too.

“This was a mistake.” And she looks so hurt, so upset. He hates how her voice cracks just then. He hates that they did this. That _he_ did this. 

“You mean the school dance, right?” Because she has to. Because Luke is hopelessly optimistic and it’s all he has going for him. But she doesn’t, and Luke isn’t surprised.

“Julie…” He goes to run after her, to grab her arm and get her to reconsider. He really does, but there’s not much he can do when he can’t touch her, nothing he could say to stop her. He knows first hand better than anyone that when you’re set on leaving, there isn’t anything that could stop you. And he thinks about how he left to pursue music, his dream, and how Julie was leaving music, her dream, because of _them_. It makes something ugly curl tightly around his chest.

He knows it’s pointless, but he has to hope that Julie will change her mind and join the band again. It’s all he has right now.

**4.**

Something about the fact that Alex and Reggie (although, he isn’t sure how much following around a fully grown man with a job counts) both have lives outside of the band is kind of disrespectful to Luke. Because Alex leaving to track down his ghost boyfriend for the whole day and Reggie carpooling with Ray while he’s grocery shopping leaves Luke so _bored_.

He doesn’t expect to find Julie in the living room on his way to the kitchen. (Sometimes he goes to the kitchen in the middle of the night to stand in front of the open fridge and wallow in self-pity. _It’s completely healthy, Alex, shut up_.) He thought she’d be at the mall or something with Flynn since it’s the weekend and Luke doesn’t know what teenage girls do on Saturday afternoons.

She’s sitting with her earphones in and her hair pulled back into a bun writing furiously. She’s surrounded by papers and books with her tongue poking out slightly, a tick he’s noticed she does when she focuses really hard on songwriting. Now that, the thought of Julie writing music without thinking to invite him, is a worse blow than his friends ditching him to live their dead lives.

Self-pity, Luke decides, can wait.

Without warning, Luke jumps up onto the dining table where she’s busy. “What are you doing?” 

Julie doesn’t flinch or even look up from her book, apparently getting used to them showing up out of nowhere. Luke isn’t sure how to feel about that. She’s cute when she’s scared. “Maths.”

His face scrunches up in disgust as he looks down at her papers and finds, she is, in fact, doing Math. “Ew, what? Why?”

“You know…school…homework.”

“No, I _mean_ , didn’t we get you back into the music programme?” 

“Well, yeah, but pythagoras is forever a part of me,” she admits woefully.

“Gross,” Luke declares, lying across her workbook, forcing her to look up from her work. 

She squints down at him unimpressed and he flashes her a charming smile. Rolling her eyes, she asks, “You don’t happen to have any knowledge about quadratic equations up in that little ghost brain of yours? You know, from 1782.”

“Ha-ha, I’m not that old and you know it.”

“Whatever you say, Moses.”

Luke sticks his tongue out at her childishly. “See, I was going to help with your work but because of that comment, I don’t think I will.”

There’s a pause. Julie’s face blanks as she stares at him. “I was kidding about the equations.”

The ghost shoots up at that indignantly. “I’m serious!” Julie merely crosses her arms across her chest and raises her eyebrow. “I’ll have you know I was always top of my class.”

“Is being a pathological liar a side effect of dying?” she muses, tilting her head slightly.

“Hey, I’m smart!”

“You died from eating hot dogs. Out of a car engine. Which was _your_ idea.”

“I didn’t come here for you to bully me, Julie.” He moves off the table and stands with his arms crossed. He tries his best to look menacing, but, judging from the way she’s snickering at him, he doesn’t think it’s working.

“What did you come here for, then?” Her hair has fallen loose from the tie she had it in. He watches as she pulls it back frustratedly. Luke doesn’t think it looks tighter than before, but what does he know?

“I _was_ going to annoy you until you decided to write with me, but I don’t think anything can be as torturous as _Maths_ ,” he mimics gagging and Julie stifles a laugh behind her hand, “so I’ve decided to spare you.”

She presses her hands against her heart and bows mockingly. “Thank you, O merciful spirit.”

“Your sarcasm isn’t appreciated.”

That causes Julie to laugh heartily and unbridledly and Luke thinks it’s the most glorious sound he’s ever heard; even rivalling her singing. He joins in with her, unable to help himself.

When they sober, Luke takes it as his cue to leave, even though he really doesn’t want to, but Julie stops him. “You can stay, if you want.”

Luke can’t help but perk up at that. His smile widens, and he positively beams at her. “Really?”

She rolls her eyes jokingly, but there’s still a smile on her face. “As long as you don’t disturb me.”

“Oh, I would never.”

For the next twenty minutes, Luke sits next to Julie as quiet as he can be, what while drumming his fingers on the table, as she goes through her work. He mentally corrects his observation about her songwriting face as it seems it’s just her regular concentrating face. 

And, it turns out, that Luke was right. Julie did not tie her hair tight enough. He watches as a single curl falls from the hair tie in front of her eye. He doesn’t think she’s noticed yet and Luke doesn’t say anything. He notices how the sun from the window catches on her hair and makes it look golden. It brushes against her cheek, on her nose, but she’s too deep in her work to do anything about it.

Luke finds himself slowly reaching his hand out. It’s shaking slightly, and he doesn’t know what he’s trying to accomplish, but the need to brush her hair away is overwhelming and he can’t help himself. And he remembers what Alex told them about how he was able to close that door, and focuses as hard as he can (even sticking his tongue out for good measure) into being able to touch her. Then Julie turns her head, ever so slightly, and Luke can’t drop his hand in time, and they’re stuck in a weird trance where she’s watching him curiously and Luke can’t stop thinking about touching her face.

“You had a hair,” he says lamely, once the silence becomes to thick, too unbearable, rubbing the back of his neck.

She finally looks at it and ducks her head. “Oh. Uh, thanks.” She tucks her hair behind her ear, and, oh Luke wishes it were him doing it.

And it’s then, for the first time, Luke realises how much he wants to touch Julie. And not just because he wants to be able to touch lifers in general, but because it’s _her_. 

It’s Julie and he wants to be able touch her.

**5.**

Yeah, so, Luke has a crush on Julie.

It’s whatever, not a big deal, definitely not something two dead idiots need to say anything about.

(“But, dude,” Alex presses, “we totally told you so.”

“We really did. Just say we were right and we’ll leave you alone.” Reggie adds, smirking from his place on the couch.

“No you won’t.”

“Yeah, we won’t.”

“You’ll never live this down.”

“I’m already dead, Alex.”)

But that’s kind of the big thing about it. The fact that he’s, you know, _dead_ and won’t ever be able to be with her and touch her like he really wants to, and yes. He’s thought a lot about this.

And his need to just reach out and _feel her_ is stronger now that he knows _why_ he wants to so badly, and being around her isn’t helping that. He’s not going to start _avoiding_ her (he’s watched a few rom coms with Alex and Flynn, he knows how that turns out), but he needs a moment to himself, away from her, where his thoughts aren’t consumed by what she might feel like.

Because his thoughts are consumed by what Julie might feel like.

He imagines her skin is soft, which isn’t anything special given how many lotions and creams and moisturisers she has, but regardless. He imagines that it’s soft. Her hands are small, and that’s a fact, an observation, he knows this. He imagines taking her hand in his, and folding it between both of his. He thinks about memorising the lines of her palms until he can map them out without thinking. He could write a whole song about touching her, he thinks fleetingly.

(He did, actually, write a song. Alex told him it was weird. Reggie thought it was romantic. And really, who else’s opinion matters other than Reggie’s?)

But the universe must have out for him (because, you know, _still dead_ ) because there Julie is in the last place he would have ever expected to find her. And he’s not as upset as he’s making it seem. In fact, he’s not upset at all. He’s just kind of miffed because how is he supposed to put distance between them if she’s _always there_.

But, right now, in this moment, with his mom reading the song he wrote for her all those years ago, he’s glad for her presence. Even if he had to leave as soon as it was over. 

“You don’t have to say anything.”

But he _does_. He has to because this is Julie and if he can’t physically be with her then he’ll be damned if he can’t be close with her otherwise. So he does. “I didn’t have many regrets in my life except for running out on my parents. Especially my mom, so...thank you.”

“You helped me feel more connected to my mom, so...I wanted to do the same thing for you.” And Luke’s mind escapes him again. The need to touch her becomes so strong that he can’t control his movements and he’s turning to her before he can even think twice about it.

“That was perfect.” He holds his hands out for her to take. He focuses as hard as he can and stares down at her, breathing shallow. With shaking hands, Julie lowers her own and Luke’s breath catches in his throat.

And just like he was expecting, her hands go right through his and he tries to laugh it off. Turns to the front and smirks to himself. “What an interesting little relationship you and I have,” he says in an attempt to lighten the mood. And it works, because Julie is smiling at him, and it burns something bright in him. 

And maybe he’s too optimistic for his own good (or hopeless, like Alex would say), but he’s not as upset as he thinks he should be.

Because Julie wants to touch him just as much as he wants to touch her.

**+1.**

So, they’re going to die. Again. 

It’s okay, Luke has come to terms with it and has accepted his fate. But this doesn’t mean he has to be _happy_ about it, because, crap, being erased from existence is _painful_. 

However, he finds, Julie watching them be erased from existence hurts way more.

“We wanted you to think we crossed over, so we pretended to.”

Julie doesn’t find this as considerate as they were intending it to be. “You self-sacrificing _idiots_. You have to go, now.”

Luke tries for a smirk, to appear as sauve as he can with his not-life being sucked out of him. “If we’re going to be erased from existence, I’d want you to be the last thing I see.”

“Don’t say that!” she scolds and it’s then that Luke notices that she’s crying and he thinks his heart breaks a little. “You have to save yourselves right now. Go join Caleb’s club. Please. Please, just go. Go, poof out. Do something, please. Do it for me!” She’s begging at this point, her voice shaking almost as much as she is, and god, Luke just wants to hold her.

It’s Reggie that says what they’re thinking, what they’ve already decided on long before they even thought of a plan. “We’re not going back there.”

Luke’s moving on autopilot now. He walks towards Julie and stops just short of her. He could touch her now, he thinks. That is, if he could. “No music is worth making, Julie, if we’re not making it with you.” _If_ I’m _not making it with you_ , but he doesn’t say this. Instead, “No regrets.” And it’s true. If he had to do everything all over again, if everything had to happen just the way it did and line up so he got to be a part of Julie’s life—so she got to be a part of theirs—he’d do it in a heartbeat.

What he does not expect is for Julie to throw her arms around his neck and pull him close to her and for him to _feel it._

Luke doesn’t know what’s happening, doesn’t miss the little release of air that catches at the back of her throat. What he does know is that he’s touching Julie and it’s better than he could have ever imagined.

He reaches out and holds onto her like she’s the most precious thing in the world. And she is, if you're asking him. He lightly dances his fingers across her arms, presses a hand on the back of her wrist, and he burns with every touch. 

She’s so soft and warm and small under him and her hands are gripping his shoulders tight and his skin is a fire beneath her touch. He slides his hands up her arms, noting the trail of goosebumps he leaves in his wake, because _he can do that now_ and he wants to do that for the rest of forever, until he reaches her face. Which he cradles, so carefully, as though she could break in his hold any minute.

He wipes the tears from her cheeks, runs the pads of his thumbs across her skin. He feels her tangle her hands in the hair at the base of his neck and positively _melts_. His fingers rub her eyebrows and she giggles, breathlessly, and Luke thinks his face is going to split from how wide he’s smiling.

“I’ve been wanting to do this for so long,” he breathes out, forehead pressed against hers.

She chuckles, smiling bright up at him and his chest tightens with something warm. “Yeah, I know. You’re not subtle.”

“I’m going to be doing it a lot, now.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

In just ten minutes, touching Julie has become Luke’s favourite thing to do. And he gets to do this. He gets to reach out for her and hold her whenever he wants.

(He bets Alex doesn’t think his song is so weird now.)


End file.
